


Delirium

by Sorayeth



Category: Ivar - Fandom, Vikings (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-11
Updated: 2018-05-11
Packaged: 2019-05-05 03:15:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14608068
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sorayeth/pseuds/Sorayeth
Summary: Ivar remembers





	Delirium

For one moment, Ivar wondered if his bones had grown teeth. The ache he usually tolerated without outward acknowledgement had changed, from being a familiar hurt to a savage, consuming animal. This sort of pain seemed hungry. It gnawed at him, relentlessly, and he felt as helpless as a rabbit cowering underneath a bear. The fever was making it hard to think, hard to remember. He exhaled, slowly, raising a hand to tug the blankets up.  
He was helpless, he remembered. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t leave, he was dying, he was trapped, he was ill……Yes. He was ill.  
He drew his lip back into a broken snarl that sounded too close to a whimper. This was not how he wanted to enter Valhalla.  
He shivered, the cold, brutal clarity returning for a blessed second. He relished the clear thought that had broken through his fevered dreams, drank it in, savored it like a fine mead. He opened his eyes, to stare indifferently at the shadows that were playing off the now bitterly familiar patterns of the wood. He did not know if he had been staring up at the same roof for hours, or days. Trying to figure it out only made his head throb, and his thoughts, when they came, more troubled. His thoughts…they circled now, gently hovering over each other like birds on the wing, before they lighted on the branches outside. He could no longer hold those any more than he could hold the wild birds in his hands.  
“Do not let me end like this.” Ivar snarled to the empty air, clenched his fingers into fists against the bedding.  
“Do not let my ending be laying in my bed. Do not let me die from this sickness, lying here on soft sheets like an old man.” Ivar scrubbed away tears. The ceiling did not answer, the ache did not stop, and the silence still felt heavy, and hungry. Ivar groaned, and lay back, shutting his eyes and hoping for a sleep that would never come.  
He heard an icy trickle of laughter, a sliver of sound that was piercing and at just the edge of his awareness. He opened his eyes, to see the flicker of candles, hear the crack and pop of wood being consumed by the flames, the smell of his unwashed skin. He crinkled his nose, and grunted irritably. Perhaps he should have allowed Ubbe to help with his bath. The fever must have been playing with his thoughts. The rational explanation was assuring enough to allow him to close his eyes.  
He felt himself easing into sleep, drifting like a cloud, and he welcomed the peaceful darkness.  
His peace was shattered by words, sharp and sudden and cruel as a strike.  
“Oh, poor, little Ivar.” Ivar flinched at the whisper was as loud as a scream. He raised his head, to peer at the shadows, the walls, and found the room empty, and the whispering silent. Worriedly, he rubbed his aching head, and shuddered. He forced himself to lay back and shut his eyes again.  
“Poor, poor, little Ivar.”  
Across the years, the memories, the guilt, and the abyss in his soul, he heard Sigurd’s mocking voice, and the bright laughter that followed.  
Ivar’s eyes shot open, blurred by the sweat, and his mouth contorted. From the corner of the room, he saw the shadows slide under the flicker of torchlight, the shifting forms and colors as Sigurd stood, arms crossed, and his teeth bared in a feral, venomous chuckle that seemed to fragment all over the room. If Ivar could have done so, he would have clapped his hands over his ears. Quaking, Ivar forced himself upright, hands instinctively going to weapons that were no longer there. He clutched emptiness, and helplessly, he let his hands fall, as he sat, rigid and transfixed, while his thoughts raced, and he inwardly screamed that what he was seeing could not be real.  
Ghost, memory, or fevered delusion…it did not matter when Ivar saw Sigurd’s curt smile, and his slow, deliberate steps as he came close enough for Ivar to see him.

“You are not laying here like an old man…brother. You are laying here, dying as a cripple. A sick, weak cripple.”  
Sigurd. His dead brother. Standing over him, with his golden braids still woven into loose waves down his back and his vivid blue tunic stained scarlet. One of his hands was curled over the wound in his side, and Ivar stared at the red trickle between Sigurd’s fingers. He dared not even a glance at his dead brother’s face. He couldn’t.  
“What…what are you doing here? You are supposed to be dead.” Ivar’s voice was shrill, and sharp, and his last word was broken as a boy just entering manhood. Normally, he would have been humiliated by the weakness. Here, he paid it no heed.  
Sigurd answered him with a mirthless, brittle chuckle. He narrowed his eyes, tilted his head, and smirked. He mockingly held out his blood-soaked palm out to Ivar, and struck Ivar across the cheek. Ivar felt the sting from the blow before he knew he had been hit, and he toppled back into the bedding, into the sheets, one hand cupping his cheek. He was trembling, as he swallowed hard, and felt Sigurd’s warm blood soaking his skin.  
Ivar screamed.  
He heard panicked voices, footsteps, as he dug his palms deep into his eyes, crushing the wet, heedless of his torn wailing as he writhed and started sobbing.  
“Ivar…Ivar! Calm yourself, please!” Ubbe’s voice gently pooled over his terror like warm water, as he swept one gentling hand over Ivar’s forehead. Ubbe had heard the strangled cry, and panicking, ran into Ivar’s room. He nearly fell to his knees when he saw Ivar’s unseeing eyes, huge with terror, as Ivar kept raising a sweating hand to the empty air while he twisted as if he were being choked.  
“Ivar! Ivar!!”  
Ivar felt Ubbe’s fingers against his cheek, and saw Ubbe’s eyes widen with worry, as he stared at the blood on the pillow.  
“Ivar, you are bleeding. Why? I cannot find a mark….” Ivar bucked against his touch, and wrenched away with a cry.  
He grunted angrily, since his mouth wouldn’t form words, and he rolled his head back and forth against the pillow.  
“My hands…... Let me have them…Let me push him away…..” His words were breathed out, and too slurred to have any sort of coherency besides the pathetic whining of a wounded animal. 

A gentling hand smoothed back his sweating hair, a soft wet cloth tried in vain to mop away some of the heat that seemed to radiate from his skull. He closed his eyes, with a groan, but the sharp lines of pain dulled a bit, and he slumped back into the bed.


End file.
